


i need a hand to help build up some kind of hope inside of me

by winterbones



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 19:19:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbones/pseuds/winterbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't need you to save me, but it'd be nice if you were there</p>
            </blockquote>





	i need a hand to help build up some kind of hope inside of me

The first time has no real meaning, to either of them. The first time, it’s just Lydia crying into her hands and Derek shaking from being drained while the moon looks down on them both, indifferent at large to their plight.

The first time, it’s just because Lydia needs something solid to anchor herself to, in that moment, so tired of standing on worms and finding everything she’s reaching out to grab nothing but air (Peter’s lips or Jackson’s hand; they’re all the same, in the end, incorporeal and unreliable) and he’s _right there_. It could have been Stiles. Or Scott. Or maybe even Allison. But it’s Derek Hale leaning heavily against the tree to her right, so it’s Derek Hale she reaches for. It’s Derek Hale she stands up on her tiptoes to kiss.

It’s Derek Hale who barely kisses her back, instinctively curling one hand around her wrist as if afraid she’d blow wolfsbane dust into his face again. There’s a second, a brief flicker, where her lips meet the resistance of his, kissing back, but it’s fleeting and then he pulls away. His eyes are a sharp, pointed blue and he lowers her hand to her side, where it hangs limp.

He drives her home, leaves her there.

 

 

 

 

The second time is behind the bleachers on the lacrosse field. She hasn’t told anyone this, but she’s terrified of going there anymore, that she hasn’t since Peter Hale left his teeth mark on her hip. Even the ground feels like an enemy, reaching up to snag her ankles, to hold her still so he can slowly meander toward her, his lethality slick and sluggish, teeth hidden behind the curl of his lips.

But it's Derek’s elongated claws that dig into the back of her leather jacket, tumbling her backwards. One arm catches her at the backs of her knees, bracing her, while the metal bleachers cast half-shadows over the plains of his face.

“You shared a mind with him,” Derek says.

“Not _willingly_ ,” Lydia snaps, though in the most private part of her she wonders. Could she have kept him out, if she had wanted? But he’d been the only one in a while who had wanted her, Lydia Martin, who had called her intelligent and strong and not crazy. Could she have stopped him, if she hadn’t so desperately needed to hear those words, to hear the reassurance of her sanity, her capability?

“I need to know what he’s planning,” Derek goes on. “One way or another we need to finish what was started in that house. Neither of us are Alphas now and I—”

“It didn’t work like that,” Lydia protests, and shoves against him. “He told me what to do. I didn’t have a spyglass into his mind.”

He nods after a moment. “Okay,” he says. One foot takes him backwards but then he pauses, seems to consider, and says, “One more thing.”

Lydia is instantly suspicious. “What?”

Suddenly, he’s so far into her personal bubble she can hear it pop. He’s a lot taller than her, and she isn’t wearing her standard heels, so she’s left staring into the wide expansive of his chest.

“One more thing,” he repeats, and his voice seems to rumble out.

She tilts her chin and he dips his head. She has a better impression of his mouth this time, solid and warm. No element of him is yielding, or soft, but she doesn’t mind, not when his fingers curl into her side and pull her tightly against him.

Derek pulls his mouth away, and looks at her with a twist of his lips. “Damnit,” he says and leaves her under the shadow of the bleachers, staring blankly after him.

 

 

 

 

The third time is at the vet’s, Derek bleeding out a large portion of his internal organs onto the table. His eyes have a glazed over look that shoots worry up Lydia’s spine.

“What’s happening?” she demands the man, bent over with his atypical ambiguous look.

“He’s dying,” he says shortly.

Lydia jerks hard enough against the table that it rattles, and leaves a long line of bruising over her middle. Behind her, Scott’s mournful growl seems to shift the fog accumulating in her mind. Stiles rocks back on his heels, hand crashing hard onto the countertop.

“Or he will be,” Dr. Deaton says, “but you can heal him, Lydia.”

“Heal him? How? I can’t—”

“I promise I will explain everything later,” Dr. Deaton adds and Lydia has to give it to him—he is an accomplished liar; there’s not even a flicker on his face. “Give me your hand, Lydia.”

She does, and Scott and Stiles crowd around her back as Dr. Deaton lays her small palm flat on Derek’s chest, raising lethargically as he blinks unseeing up at the ceiling. She can feel his heart beating, but not just through the skin on skin contact, the way anyone could. She can feel his heart pulsating inside her, like a second organ.

And like that, she knows what to do.

With Stiles and Scott watching, she bends over him, hair tickling against his jaw. His eyes flutter in reaction, and then close when her mouth comes softly over his. The wounds of his body are like little red strings that she winds around her fingers.

Her mouth still on his, a chaste almost soothing kiss, and she thinks _heal thyself_ and oddly enough, his body obeys.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Deaton has left them to recover in the protective circle of the ash around his clinic. Stiles and Scott end up cramming together on the bench, curled into each other. There hasn’t been a lot of talking from Scott, but with Allison’s arrow nearly claiming Derek, Lydia imagines Scott isn’t much in the mood.

She sits beside Derek in case his body caves into the wolfsbane poison from the tip of Allison’s honed arrow. Lydia tries not to think of her, black-haired pulled back into a severe twist, eyes too much like Peter Hale’s, madness in grief.

Derek jerks away, gasping and coughing, like someone fished him from the water. He tries to roll over on the metal gurney, and Lydia closes a hand around the muscles tensed in his arm.

“It’s okay,” she says. “No, really. It’s okay. Don’t freak out or you’ll end up bleeding out again—not a pleasant sight, and I’ve grown used them.”

He turns, eyes focusing. “You—”

“Yes me,” she says, knowing what he means. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

One big hand closes around the side of her face. Derek’s brows are furrowed in concentration, like she’s a clock that’s ticking without batteries and he wants to pick her apart and find out why.

This time, they both move forward, Derek leaning down at his hips and Lydia planting her hands on the gurney to lift herself up. His fingers coil into her hair, holding her in place, and his tongue moves into the wet, warm cave of her willing mouth, drawing her taste into him. She inhales him, pine and rain in the woods and a bit of leather.

“That is the single grossest thing in the history of grossest things,” Stiles mutters somewhere behind them. “And one time I saw you cough up black blood.”

Derek only sends Stiles a look of pure malice and Lydia falls back into her chair.

 

 

 

 

The fifth time, with Allison pointing another wolfsbane tipped arrow at Derek, her eyes a mixture of grief and rage and something akin to madness. Derek, exhausted and spent from his fight with Peter Hale, reclaiming his status as pack Alpha, can only look at her.

Lydia’s not doing so hot either, being the bait that had lured Peter Hale into the open. He had still _wanted_ her. Dr. Deaton had said that Peter Hale was half-addicted to her, and what pumped through her blood stream (“catnip for werewolves,” Stiles had proclaimed, eyes narrowed at Derek), and Lydia had wondered if that was what was up with Derek, and the kissing—though she had wanted to kiss him right back, and that certainly hadn’t been the case with Peter.

“Oh no,” Dr. Deaton had said with a private smile, “that’s something else entirely.”

“Allison, _don’t_ ,” Lydia says, scooting toward Derek, mud staining her stockings. Derek’s hand shoots out behind him, and presses against her hip so she can’t move forward anymore.

“He killed my mother,” Allison says, and her voice is laced with so much sorrow that Lydia knows Allison will never be okay again. Allison will never be the same again. Just like she won’t, not with Peter Hale’s scars all over her body. “He _killed_ her.”

“I didn’t,” Derek snaps weakly from his prone position.

“You _did_ ,” Allison snarls lowly, and her bowstring goes taut. “You bit her. She was—she had—what else could she do?”

“Trusted that her family was strong enough to stop her from hurting people,” Derek manages, “50 years in Beacon Hills, and the Hales had never killed anyone—not until Peter watched his family burn alive.”

But Lydia isn’t really listening. She can already see the blood, and knows Derek’s body isn’t strong enough to heal from it, with or without her help. So her arm snakes around his neck and she forces him back against her. Derek twists, eyes wide with shock that she had managed, and she presses her mouth to his, pouring whatever she has left into him. Her skin already feels papery thin, and now she can feel it crinkle, like she’d being held over a fire. They both keep their eyes open, and she can see the sheen of red coat his, and then _Derek_ realizes what she’s doing, can feel it, and can feel the way her body sags against his, too weak to stand.

“No,” he snarls, voice low and deep. “ _Idiot_.” But still, he’s bringing her against him, holding her there, as his blood reluctantly flows, imbued with her magic.

Allison sinks to her knees, bow hitting the ground. She starts screaming. There are no tears, only screams, purging herself of it, letting the woods take it from her. Leaning against Stiles, Scott makes a slight move forward, but in the end hangs back. No one is sure how to comfort Allison, no is sure if she _can_ be comforted, or if her mother’s death will be an infected wound, never healing properly. In the end, that’s something only Allison can decide and for now, all she can do is scream.

Derek’s mouth moves through Lydia’s hair. “Don’t do that again,” he orders.

Sleepily, she smiles up at him. It feels like it’s the fire time in weeks that she’s really smiled. “No promises,” she says, “because you never know when your ass is going to need me to save it.”

He rolls his eyes. “Just go to sleep.” And Lydia does.


End file.
